


With all this, I mean love

by glim



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-22
Updated: 2010-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-08 06:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The light etches a story across a sky as crystal clear and delicate as glass, and just before she wakes, Morgana realizes that she's not reading this tale but telling it, and that the tale she tells is her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With all this, I mean love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Ladies of Camelot AU Fic Challenge at gwenmorganabbc. Prompt: Mid-range!AU: Gwen/Morgana; Gwen and Morgana are in the same social strata (either both nobles or both commoners, you decide). Title paraphrased from Chaucer's _Parliament of Foweles_.

It starts with a dream.

And Morgana laughs, because doesn't it always start that way? Some fine-spun thread of memory that has not yet happened and is only remembered during the raw, chilly moments before dawn. A dream of warmth and of a garden bursting with the sounds and colors of spring.

Camelot doesn't have a garden like this. Morgana knows that much, though whatever other thoughts she seems to have are as fleeting as the wind and wisps of cloud around her. The maze she reaches at the edge of the garden melts away with a touch of her hand and the path to the center is laid clear for her to follow.

There, at the center of the maze that lies at the center of the springtime garden, is light and warmth like she's never known. Unfamiliar, but not unreachable or unreal. And yet, she knows, this is not a goal, not a reaching or an ending, not a quest to find the center of the maze, but to be the center of the maze, to be the mystery solved and unknown made manifest.

To find, at the center of the labyrinth, not just herself, but the most real, most wonderful expression of her desire. Warm hands and lips that touch her own, that don't beg for perfection, but ask for her to touch, taste, feel, to make love to her on the dew-damp grass before the sun burns the morning away.

_My lady, my queen._

Morgana feels the words – inside her, in the air around her, in the grass that tangles in her hair and slides between her fingers – as much as she says and hears them. Something inside her swells, something more than arousal and more than happiness, and she arches up closer to the lips that press to hers and to the hand that slips down the front of her body.

The light etches a story across a sky as crystal clear and delicate as glass, and just before she wakes, Morgana realizes that she's not reading this tale but telling it, and that the tale she tells is her own.

~

A great embassy set out of for Cameliard at the end of the summer, bearing great gifts of silk and spices, expensive jewels and plate, all symbols of the friendship that Uther hoped would grow up between the two kingdoms. The exchange would be equal, a benefit to both their realms.

They signed the treaty on the first clear morning of autumn. Word was sent back to Camelot immediately and Morgana informed the household to prepare for celebrations as soon as the king and his son returned.

Cameliard became one of Camelot's subject kingdoms and Guinevere became betrothed to Arthur.

~

"This is the letter you're sending to her? The letter you're sending to your future wife?"

"Yes." Arthur's confident smile faltered for a moment. He made a move to snatch back the paper he offered Morgana, and then relented. "Just read it over, all right?"

Morgana sighed and cast her eyes down at the parchment. She found exactly what she thought she'd find – a careful anatomy of love that within one paragraph had reduced the Lady Guinevere into a catalogue of eyes, lips, hands, and other vaguely identifiable feminine charms. Any well-read courtier in Camelot could've written it. Morgana, possibly unfairly, suspected that some well-read courtier had written the epistle instead of Arthur.

Arthur replied with a sigh of his own. "You don't like it. Fine. How would you write it? There's nothing wrong with that I've written there, you know."

"Nothing wrong? It rather depends on whom you ask, doesn't it?" Morgana thought, tracing the tip of her finger down the edge of the parchment. "I wouldn't cloak her in mystery. Nor would I sound as if I were frightened to touch her body."

"You know I can't write that." Arthur took the paper back for good this time and glared at it.

Next to him, Merlin touched Arthur awkwardly on the warm. "I thought it sounded all right. Um, poetic. The part about the eyes…"

Morgana glanced up at Merlin, who'd remained so quiet during the whole exchange, expecting to find an ironic laugh on his lips, but instead found the same strange, sad smile that he'd had when he and Arthur returned from Cameliard.

"Really? Maybe next time I'll write… write one for you," Arthur finished, his voice trailing off into awkward silence. Apparently he expected the ironic smile from Merlin, too.

Morgana stood at the window for a long time after Arthur left, watching Merlin cross the courtyard back to his own rooms in the castle. Arthur followed a while later, his step slower and heavier than usual. They'd probably fought after leaving Morgana's rooms and before reaching Arthur's. Perhaps about that letter Arthur could never write to Merlin.

The sun set and the evening wind scattered a few leaves and scraps over the flagstones and Morgana thought about the Lady Guinevere. About how she was no strange, distant beauty made up of metaphor, no unobtainable dream, but someone so wonderful and real that no letter Morgana would write would ever sum her up in the words love poets insisted on using.

~

There is nothing about her dreams that isn't real.

Morgana knows this to be true, despite what Gaius says and what Uther hopes.

Real, and not all unpleasant, though the dreams that don't leave her full of shivering dread are the one she keeps to herself. Maybe that's wrong, and maybe she should tell the physician, but they are hers, intimately and irrevocably her own, and Morgana knows that if these dreams of warm hands and lips are prophetic ones, then there is only person with whom she will share them.

Sometimes she dreams of the past, her own past, but sometimes not. Sometimes she dreams of Camelot before it was a kingdom and sometimes of the gold-green threads of magic that still bind the kingdom to the land.

Sometimes she dreams of Guinevere before she came to Camelot, a laughing girl with bright eyes and gentle, strong hands. More often, after she does arrive, Morgana dreams of the Guinevere she'll come to know.

She dreams of the sky spinning above them, a blur of sunlight and leaves, and the two of them tumbling to the forest floor, damp grass and cool air around them again. Guinevere laughs for her, that soft, secret laugh Morgana loves so much, and Morgana catches both her hands to hold them above her head as she kisses down the length of Guinevere's body. She nuzzles at her breasts, tenderly, until Guinevere moans and arches up closer to her touch. Then, Morgana is kissing her again, with lips and teeth and tongue, moving over the swell of her breasts and finding the most sensitive places to elicit that low, moaning sound from Guinevere again.

All of this, all the touching and taking and giving, the tangling of fingers and tongues, the taste of Guinevere on her lips and the sound of her sharp gasps echoing through her mind, all of it, the unspoken, unwritten desire, the feelings she never before had need to give voice to, all of it, Morgana knows, is love.

And so she whispers this story over Guinevere's body, promising her that when they wake and when they finally come together, she will tell it to her every morning before the sun rises high in the sky. She will touch the curve of her waist and slip between her thighs and know Guinevere, read her until meaning unfolds and twists between them.

~

Guinevere smoothed her hands over the bolt of material and gave a nod for it to be left with the others she'd already chosen. "You can leave us now, Alison."

The maid nodded and left the room silently, taking the discarded silks and laces away with her. The wedding preparations had been going on for at least two weeks now and all of Camelot was in a tizzy of anticipation.

Arthur was restless and spent most of his time shouting at whomever he could, but Guinevere…. Guinevere spent most of her time with Morgana, examining wedding gifts and listening to the plans for menus and music. Most of the choice hadn't been left to her and she claimed the time she spent here, in the quiet, sunlit chambers that Morgana occupied, were the best hours of the day because she chose to stay here, to do her needlework or, as she did today, to listen to Morgana read.

Once her maidservant left, Guinevere came to stand at Morgana's side, peering over her shoulder at the book on Morgana's lap. "What are you reading?"

"Oh. Nothing important. Poetry." Morgana glanced up at Guinevere, smiled, and watched Guinevere's fingers move down the length of her arm to rest at the edge of her wrist. "Were you enjoying it?"

"I like listening to your voice."

"Guinevere…"

"Call me Gwen, please. Nobody else here remembers to." Her fingers stroked Morgana's hand again before circling around her wrist. "Shall we talk a walk around the gardens before the morning gets too warm?"

Morgana closed the book. She'd already dreamed their story over and over again and knew it as well as she knew her own heart. "Yes. Yes, I think we shall."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [All this mean I by Love (the out of time remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10972908) by [claudine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudine/pseuds/claudine)




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